What Makes Sammy Run? (43 page)

I guess he knew what he was doing. The world was a race to Sammy. He was running against time.

Sometimes I used to sit at the bar and say, Al, I don’t give a good damn if you never move from this seat again. If you never write another line. I default. If it’s a race, you can scratch my name right now. Al Manners does not choose to run. And it would run through my head like that, What makes Sammy run? What makes Sammy run? Does he know where he’s going? I asked one of the reporters:

Say, Tony, what makes Sammy run?

You’re drunk, Al, he said. How the hell do I know?

But I’ve got to know, I told him. It’s important. Don’t you see? It’s the answer to everything.

You’re nuts, he said.

Three weeks later I had my first run-in with Sammy Glick.

Those were the days when I was writing my drama column and I used to bat it out around four o’clock and then go over to Mac and Charlie’s and forget.

One morning a storm from the general direction of the city editor blew at me.

Why in hell don’t you look what you’re doing? he said.

What’s eating you? I said cagily.

That column you turned in last night, he said. It didn’t make sense. You left all the verbs out of the last paragraph. If it hadn’t been for that kid Sammy Glick it would have run the way you wrote it.

What’s Sammy Glick got to do with it? I said, getting sore.

Everything, he said. He read it on his way to the linotypers. So he sat right down and rewrote the paragraph. And damned well, too.

That’s great, I said. He’s a great kid.

A few minutes later I came face to face with Samuel Glick himself. Nice work, I said.

Oh, that’s all right, he said.

Listen, wise guy, I said. If you found something wrong with my stuff, why didn’t you come and tell me? You knew where I was.

Sure, he said, but I didn’t think we had time.

But you had time to show it to the city editor first, I said. Smart boy.

Gee, Mr. Manners, he said, I’m sorry. I just wanted to help you.

You did, I said.

Sammy seemed very satisfied. Don’t you think it’s dangerous to drop so many verbs? he said. You might hit somebody down below.

Listen, I said. Tell me one thing. How the hell can you read when you’re running so fast?

That’s how I learned to read, he said—while I was running errands.

It made me sore. He was probably right. Somebody called him and he spun around and started running. What makes Sammy Glick run? I pondered. It must have something to do with centrifugal force, only deeper.

A couple of weeks later I turned in my column and went down to the bar. The telephone rang for me. It was Sammy. He said, The boss says your column is four inches short.

What the hell, I said. Tell him I’ll be right up.

You don’t have to worry, he said. I took care of it myself.

You, I said stupidly. I knew he had me.

Sure, Al, he said. I dashed off a four-inch radio column to fill, and the boss liked it.

Oh, he’s seen it already, I said. Then why the hell did you call me? Why don’t you just take over my column?

I just wanted to help you, he said.

Sure, I said, Joe Altruist, and hung up.

But the pay-off came the next morning. I had just started on the column when the city editor came over.

From now on write it six inches shorter, he said.

O.K. by me, I said, if you can give me one good reason.

From now on we’re using Sammy Glick’s radio column, he said.

You mean Sammy Glick the copy boy? I asked.

No, I mean Sammy Glick the radio columnist, he said. His stuff looked good today.

Maybe you’d like to know he copied the first paragraph from Somerset Maugham, I said.

Maybe that’s where you need to go for your stuff, he said.

So that’s how Sammy got his start. He was smart enough never to crib from the same writer twice. When it came to wisecracks, he rolled his own. I hated him so much I began to admire him. Every other copy boy was a nice guy. At least if you bent over, they’d ask you to stand up and turn around before stabbing you.

But I began to see what made Sammy run. Though I couldn’t see just then where he was running.

After Sammy Glick had been writing his column for a couple of months he came up to me one day and said, Say, Al, next Monday is my birthday, and since you sorta gave me my start I thought maybe you’d like to have dinner with my girl and me at the Algonquin.

I’ll never forget that girl, or the day either, and there’s a real story in that too. Everything Sammy did was a story. That’s why I’m telling you all this. Because Sammy is a genius, one of our big Americans, Napoleon in a double-breasted suit. Some day he’s going to lie in a museum, stuffed, labeled:
THIS IS SAMMY GLICK. IN AN AGE THAT COULD NEVER STOP RUNNING, HE RAN THE FASTEST
.

We met in front of the restaurant. He was standing with a spindly-legged, thin, pale, vague little girl. She would have been an angel, only her face was made up like an actress, heavy red lipstick and eye shadow and too much powder. I wanted to take my handkerchief and wipe it all off. The poor little kid. The blue eyes and the frail body and the sad look were hers. They grew out of the shadow of the tenement right up through the crowded sidewalk. There was a little of the gutter and a little of the sky in her. I could see her staying after school, lost somewhere between the two covers of a book.

And then, later, almost grown up, evening elbows on the dusty sill, looking up at the stars, clean stars, high over a Hundred and Eighteenth Street.

Miss Rosalie Goldbaum, he said, meet Mr. Al Manners. He has the column next to mine.

Oh, Sammy has told me so much about you, she said.

Sammy smiled. We walked into the Algonquin lobby. He was nineteen years old.

Dinner was what I would have called uneventful. Sammy was almost too busy looking for celebrities to pay much attention to either of us. Miss Goldbaum was shy, very sweet and frankly unaffected. Except when she talked about Sammy. And I encouraged her. Perhaps I had been misjudging Sammy, I thought. Perhaps there was another side to him. He was a thoughtful lover, and slowed down to a walk for Miss Goldbaum.

You know, Mr. Manners, she said, writing that column isn’t what Sammy wants to do.

Of course not, I said; they forced it on him.

He just does that to make a living, she said.

It’s a damn shame, I said.

But he writes
me
the loveliest things, she said, and some day he’s going to be a great writer. Because he’s a poet.

Sammy was looking across the room at George S. Kaufman. He was lost in thought. Miss Goldbaum edged her hand into his. Sammy played with it absentmindedly, like a piece of silverware.

Gee, Miss Goldbaum said, sometimes when I look at Sammy I just can’t believe it, so artistic and everything, and him just a little kid right out of the Bronx.

Her tight little world was bursting with Sammy Glick. All her craving to live and her blood beating to possess and to be maternal found expression in this one little smart ass. She had little pointed breasts, miserable and sad, and they seemed to me to be reaching out for Sammy, the way black-eyed Susans tilt themselves toward the sun. She was boring me. So I caught George Kaufman’s eye, and he came over, and was introduced, and had a drink with us.

Sammy was in his element, artificially gay, trying his best to out-wisecrack Kaufman. He was obsequious, sniveling, unsure of himself and very bold. It would have been funny, only I had seen Sammy too long.

Kaufman stayed only a few minutes, and soon Miss Goldbaum yawned, and I said I had a lot of work to do before getting to bed,
and Sammy looked at Miss Goldbaum and said, We both appreciate your celebrating this way with us. She nodded. Yes, Sammy said it exactly right. And they were gone, walking down the steps to the subway arm in arm.

When I turned to Winchell’s column next morning there it was, the bold-face print laughing up at me:

When rising critic Sammy Glick celebrated his nineteenth birthday yesterday at the Algonquin, Al Manners and George Kaufman were on hand as principal cake eaters
.

You didn’t have to be a mastermind to figure out how Walter got that item, and when Sammy came in I gave him one of my searching looks.

I see where Kaufman got himself a plug in Winchell’s column, I said.

Yeah, Sammy cracked, you should have been there.

Listen, Samuel, I came back. You got enough gall to be divided into nine parts.

Aw, don’t be sore, Al, he said. I can’t keep hiding under your desk. I gotta spread my wings a little.

You didn’t even give Miss Goldbaum a break, I said. You’re a disgrace to the rodent family.

Listen, he cracked. She gets a break three times a week.

You … stink, I ended lamely. I was too sore to be smart.

O.K. by me, he said, walking off. Some day you’ll cut off an arm for one little whiff.

Then another thing happened. It all began when a tall, timid guy came in with a manuscript under his arm and asked for Mr. Glick. He had written a radio script, and since Mr. Glick was an expert on radio he thought maybe Mr. Glick would be so kind as to read his stuff.

I should be happy to help you, Sammy said, a little different than he had ever talked before. I could feel at that moment something loud and strong pumping inside that little guy, like a piston, twisting him up and forcing him on.

After the tall guy had gone, Sammy sat down and read the stuff. He smiled as he read it, and when he hit the third page he laughed out loud.

Hey, this is good stuff, he said; funny as hell.

What’s it about? I asked doubtfully.

Brand-new angle, he said. The guy won’t have anything to do with the girl. So
she
kidnaps
him
. But he still says nix and gets her arrested. In the court it looks like curtains for her, but they clinch and decide to get married, and the babe is saved because he’s the only witness and a guy can’t testify against his own wife. Pretty hot!

The guy who wrote it came back the next week.

You have an idea here, Sammy told him. Of course it’s rough, and it needs developing, but maybe with a little work we could fix it up, he said.

You mean you’ll help me! said the dope.

I think I can pull something out of it, Sammy said, and then I’ll give it to my agent.

Say, I didn’t expect all
this
, said the dope.

When the guy had gone, Sammy asked me, Say, Al, who’s a good agent for me? I want to sell this story to Hollywood. I got the title all doped out—
Girl Steals Boy
.

Why not Leland Heyward? He only manages Hepburn and a couple of dozen other stars, I said.

Is he good on stories? Sammy asked.

Pretty fair, I said. He makes a couple of thousand a week out of them.

Well, I’ll think it over.

I thought that was the end of it. It should have been, if life didn’t confound us ordinary sleep-and-eat people by producing geniuses like Sammy Glick. Life is choppy, full of rip tides and sudden breakers, and some guys scream once and go down, and others fight their way to the surface and still go down. Some have water wings; they have a genius for self-preservation. It’s them we see when we raise our water-logged heads above the foam, floating,
just floating over us as nice as you please—Sammy Glicks, every one of them.

Two weeks later Sammy rushed in, exultant and jumpy.

Shake hands with God’s gift to Hollywood, he said, grabbing my hand before I had time to stick it in my pocket.

Don’t use the name of the Lord in vain, I said. You mean you sold that story?

Five thousand dollars, he said. We should have had a better price, but this is my first story.

It’s a disgrace, I said, five thousand.

Well, that’s just the first, he said, and there’s plenty more ideas where this one came from.

You mean from the guy who wrote this one, I said.

Aw, he said, he had nothing on the ball but a prayer. He’s lucky I bothered with him.

Like Miss Goldbaum, I said quietly.

And all of a sudden I hated Sammy Glick. Before, I had been annoyed, or disturbed, or just revolted. This was one hundred percent American hatred.

The next morning I read something in the film section of the morning paper that revealed the fine Bronx hand of Sammy Glick:

Sammy Glick, prominent radio columnist, has sold his first screen story to Colossal for $10,000. Titled
Girl Steals Boy
, this is the first of a series Colossal has contracted for, according to Mr. Glick. Collaborating with him was Eugene Spitzer.

What I can’t understand, I thought, is how Eugene Spitzer ever got mentioned at all. I was very bitter. All of a sudden I was jealous of Sammy Glick, and congratulating myself on not being like him.

One day, a week later, Sammy didn’t show up at all. Maybe he’s sick, I thought at first, but I quickly discounted this optimism. Guys like Sammy Glick don’t get sick, unless it helps them get out of a contract, or lands them an insurance payment. The afternoon passed.

Sammy came in around suppertime. He wore a new suit. He also wore a new expression. I liked it even less than the old stock. He had a blue check shirt and a red carnation in his buttonhole. He held a cigarette loosely between his fingers. My Sammy Glick, my little copy boy.

Hello, Obnoxious, I said.

I came in to say good-bye. Sammy said. I’m off for Hollywood.

How did this happen? I asked. Metro wire that they just couldn’t get along another day without you?

Not exactly, said Sammy seriously. My agent sold me to Colossal on the strength of that story.

And that’s strength, I said. How about Eugene What’s-his-name? Does he go too?

Colossal just wanted me, Sammy said simply.

Well, I said, our gain is Colossal’s loss.

No more of these pebbles for me, Sammy said. It’s two hundred and fifty bucks a week for me, starting a week from Wednesday.

There was a short pause, during which time I reviewed the history of Sammy Glick, complete from fifteen a week to two hundred and fifty. It was America, all the glory and the opportunity, the push and the speed, the grinding of gears and the crap.